The Slice: How ’bout Taul Purner in 2010?

So I have this friend who always registers for Bloomsday under an assumed name.

I’ve mentioned him before. One year he was an Elvis movie character, Lucky Jackson. Another time he borrowed the name of a TV cop, Steve McGarrett. And so on.

This year, as sort of a tribute to the race’s founder, he decided to go with “Kon Dardong.”

So he goes to the Bloomsday office during lunchtime. And who do you suppose emerges to help him register?

“The man himself,” said my friend, whose real name is Ken.

Yes, there stood Don Kardong. Suddenly Ken felt like the nervous teen in “Summer of ’42” trying to buy condoms.

Scrambling to muster a semblance of poise, Ken mumbled something about needing to take the application home and study it. He said he might be running with some friends, et cetera.

So a few days later, he went back. A woman in the office stepped up to help him.

Ken submitted his Kon Dardong application and paid his entry fee.

“I was prepared to say the name was French,” he said.

Ecoute, repete: Kon Dardong.

There was no need. It never came up.

So the Donger is good to go.

Maybe next year he can sign up as Air Wayheights or Dooms Dayhill.

•Reader challenge: See if you can tell which of the following were characters played by Bing Crosby in movies and which were members of the Spokane Chiefs.

A) Frank Elgin. B) Pat Falloon. C) Darcy Loewen. D) Kerry Toporowski. E) Bob Wallace. F) Jim Hardy. G) Jon Klemm. H) Father Chuck O’Malley.

Find the answers right above Today’s Slice question.

•How you found out that someone was using your credit card number: Harley Barnhart in Post Falls got a call from the card company asking if he had recently placed three orders with a porn distributor in Germany. He hadn’t.

•Apparently they had seen “Bonanza” but had never heard of Lauren Bacall: “I was in elementary school in the ’60s,” wrote North Idaho’s Lauren Hopkins. “Do you think anyone could pronounce my name correctly? No. Here’s what I was called: Lorraine, Laureen, Lorna, Laura, Laurie. And then some idiot kid asked me, ‘Are you named after Lorne Greene?’ ”

•Bing/Chiefs answers: A, E, F and H were the movie characters.

•Today’s Slice question (ripped off from chef/cyclist David Blaine’s blog): Where around town have you seen people using those coveted pens that started as souvenirs of The Davenport hotel?